Sometimes you need to know how an act (or a specific section of an act) read at an earlier point in time. It may be to confirm that the relevant portions of the legislation have not changed, to determine how a contract should be interpreted, or for some other reason.

Finding a point-in-time version of an act can be a challenge. Fortunately a number of electronic services offer point-in-time versions of legislation, although few of these services go back more than ten years. There are three main sources for point-in-time legislation: government websites, Quicklaw and CanLII.

The federal government provides point-in-time coverage of federal acts and regulations through the Department of Justice Canada website. To access these you should go to the act or regulation that you are interested in and then click on the link at the top to “Previous Versions”. The Justice Canada website has has point-in-time versions of acts from January 1, 2003 on and point-in-time versions of regulations from March 22, 2006 on.

The majority of the provincial Queen’s Printers provide some sort of point-in-time legislation, although some of them charge for this service.

Quicklaw provides point-in-time legislation for federal, Alberta, B.C. and Ontario legislation, but not for the other provinces or the three territories.

CanLII provides point-in-time versions of federal and provincial legislation, although its point-in-time coverage of territorial legislation is spotty. One particularly useful feature of CanLII’s point-in-time service is the ability to compare two different versions of a piece of legislation using the “Compare” button. Being able to see exactly how an act or regulation differs from the current legislation can be tremendously helpful.

Below is a table of point-in-time coverage on various databases. If I have missed anything, please let me know and I will add it to the table. I have noted paid resources.